Journey Stories

I grew up in a Protestant family, attending an evangelical Quaker church and maintaining a fairly strong belief in the existence and goodness of God. However, during my senior year in highschool, the church (and the larger group of churches) I had spent most of my life going to ended up going through a messy split, and it prompted a lot of questions about what the Church really is, how to interpret the Bible, and how to distinguish God’s prompting from one’s own thoughts, opinions, and doubts. ... [Read more]

I was originally baptized into the Roman Catholic Church when I was in the second grade with my aunt and uncle. I then moved in with my grandparents and was raised in a Protestant church. While attending the Protestant church I always used to ask questions to my grandparents about my salvation because I felt like there was always a piece missing that I wasn’t understanding. As an adult I watched my uncle get baptized in the Eastern Orthodox Church but at the time I wasn’t ready to do too much ... [Read more]

Growing up Lutheran, I drifted from faith in college but still had big spiritual questions. Believing Christianity was irrelevant, I dabbled in Eastern religions and dropped out of college to study meditation at an ashram in India. Returning to the U.S. after a year, I felt disoriented, and shelved my spiritual search. Mo and I met in Portland in 1997, married and quickly had three kids. When Mo suggested church for them, I resisted but grudgingly relented and we started attending a local ... [Read more]

I was born on the cusp of the 1960s. The youngest in the family with four older brothers, I grew up on the East Coast in an upper-middle-class Catholic family that was wounded by alcoholism. Going through some very difficult things as a child, I began to doubt God’s existence at age 13. My “prodigal” teenage years led me to dabble in the hippie culture and in “New Age” philosophies. At 17, my father died, I dropped out of high school, got a GED, went away to college early and graduated with ... [Read more]

I want you to imagine coming home from college for the first time only to discover that most of your immediate family has converted to a new faith. I want you to imagine how you’d react to that, because that’s what happened to me! For as long as I remember, I attended the same non-denominational Protestant church. During my years in the High School youth group, I became quite heavily involved in all aspects of that church—leading worship band, working at the church’s coffee cart on Sundays, ... [Read more]

“Welcome Home.” I heard those beautiful words over and over again in the first few weeks after my baptism at St John’s in May 2021. I knew deep in my soul that I had finally arrived at the “Home” I had been searching for since I was a teenager in the late 60’s. I grew up in a Christian home attending the Quaker (a.k.a. Friends) Church. I had three brothers and two sisters. Life was simple and content. In my childhood I knew I was a sinner and was probably never going to make the grade to ... [Read more]

I came into Orthodoxy with very little. One could say I came from a family of faith, but I had so little it might have well been none. There aren’t many Community of Christ (formally RLDS) churches around the country and we moved a great deal. Faith was private in our family so, even with a RLDS priesthood member as a father, I had little guidance and have no memory of mentorship beyond learning children's versions of Book of Mormon and Old Testament stories when we did attend church. Growing ... [Read more]

I was raised Lutheran. We were very involved in church: My mother played the organ at church every week, I was in plays, and served in the altar for several years. When I was 8 years old, my father lost his eye in a trucking accident and our middle-class life was gone. We were now receiving government assistance. I noticed quickly that people at church were treating us differently. We were not invited to activities anymore, and people would just walk by us without acknowledging us. As I got ... [Read more]

I was born into a faithless, broken home. My parents divorced when I was three. I spent the next nine years mostly with my dad, who mocked God, thinking belief in Him was a joke. Every other weekend I would visit my mother, who was open and loose with spiritualism. She entertained all sorts of things, including Wicca, Buddhism, and belief in fairies. In both homes there were various addictions, pain, and struggle. I was exposed to many damaging things from a very young age. However, even during ... [Read more]

I am thankful I was raised in a Christian home. All of my family is Christian and, growing up, the majority of my family on my dad’s side were nearby and attended an Assembly of God church where we went as well. My grandparents were active in music and my dad ran the A/V. We went regularly through my freshman year of high school and then I was off to college. College was where I heard the word Orthodoxy for the first time.                                              I moved into a shared ... [Read more]